Bartleby the Scrivener: A Tale of Wall Street

236 THE PIAZZA TALES
SKETCH NINTH
hood's isle and the hermit oberlus
1
That darkesome glen they enter, where they find
That cursed man low sitting on the ground,
Musing full sadly in his sullein mind ;
His griesly lockes long grouen and unbound,
Disordered hong about his shoulders round,
And hid his face, through which his hollow eyne
Lookt deadly dull, and stared as astound ;
His raw-bone cheekes, through penurie and pine,
Were shronke into the jawes, as he did never dine.
His^garments nought but many ragged clouts,
With thornes together pind and patched reads,
The which his naked sides he wrapt abouts.'
South-east of Crossman's Isle lies Hood's Isle, or
McCain's Beclouded Isle ; and upon its south side is a
vitreous cove with a wide strand of dark pounded black
lava, called Black Beach, or Oberlus's Landing. It might
fitly have been styled Charon's.
It received its name from a wild white creature who
spent many years here ; in the person of a European
bringing into this savage region qualities more diabolical
than are to be found among any of the cannibals.
surrounding
About half a century ago, Oberlus deserted at the
above-named island, then, as now, a solitude. He built
himself a den of lava and clinkers, about a mile from
the Landing, subsequently called after him, in a vale,
or expanded gulch, containing here and there among
the rocks about two acres of soil capable of rude cultiva-
tion ; the only place on the isle not too blasted for
that purpose. Here he succeeded in raising a sort of
degenerate potatoes and pumpkins, which from time to